The latest must-have item in the war against ennui appears to be a Netflix Queue. It’s almost disturbing how much evidence there is for the proposition that Most Improvements, Especially Those Implemented On The Internet, Are Engineered Badly (Friendster, BookCrossing, Instant Messaging).

Mind you, it’s not that Netflix isn’t a substantial improvement over going to Blockbuster, if you tend to plan more than about an hour in advance before wanting to watch a movie, and you don’t have any fine independent video stores in your neighborhood. It’s just that getting excited about the Netflix Queue, and boring the rest of us at parties with what’s on it, is kind of on the same level as doing a song and dance about the latest carrot peeler, as Carl points out. It’s a list, people, and one that I’ve got implemented on a little pad of paper that I carry around with me. Flexible, compact, cheap, replaceable, and nonproprietary.